Performancing Stream of Consciousness – Fri April 18, 2008

[UPDATED] Sure the weather’s great right now, but just in case you feel like staying in and reading, here are some links for you for the weekend. You can also listen to a podcast version:

1. Version 2.0 of MindMeister, a web-based mindmapping and brainstorming tool, has just been released. (They also released MindMeister Offline, based on Google Gears, in Nov 2007.) Note: I received an email msg about V2.0, but the MindMeister blog does not mention it yet. MindMeister is collaborative, so it has an advantage over desktop-based mindmapping software.
2. I love it when people talk about the value of small daily incremental improvements – as Aaron Wall at SEOBook has. This approach is sometimes called Kaizen. I sometimes refer to it as “improvement by slow degrees,” which doesn’t overwhelm you. The small successes along the way motivate you.
3. A must read: Aaron Wall writes, Google thinks you are a black hat SEO.
4. Loren Baker discusses Alexa’s new web page ranking system, which doesn’t rely as much on the Alexa toolbar. Unfortunately, that means a lot of sites are seeing big changes in their Alexa rankings.
5. Jason at WP Elements has released yet another free WordPress theme, Charred. It’s based on the previous incarnation of his site’s theme and has magazine-style elements, including two sizes of post thumbnails.
6. Barry Schwartz wrote at Search Engine Land that Google Mail servers are having trouble supporting IMAP accounts, possibly to the point of removing it as an option. Although I haven’t tried in a long time, I can’t remember ever being able to get my IMAP accounts integrated into GMail.
7. Want to run a contest on your blog but not sure where to get prizes? Jennifer Chait at Network Blogging Tips has some suggestions.
8. Zoe Marlowe at Devlounge has an indepth review of photo storage sites.
9. It’s spring time, and a young person’s thoughts might just turn to… podcasting. But what do you podcast about? Stiff offers five ideas for podcasts, over at Audival. If you plan on experimenting with podcasting, here’s an important tip: warm up your body before recording more than a few minutes of voice. I like to wear a hoodie because of throat problems. When your body is warm, there’s less stress on the vocal chords.
10. If podcasting is so Q1 2008 to you, maybe you’re into vodcasting or general web video production. If so, check out TubeMogul. They bill themselves as “a free service that acts as a single point for deploying” video to the top video sharing sites. That means you upload once and they get your video out to other sites. They also collect stats from each site and present the aggregation from their panel.

Happy reading. Or you could go outside and play.